And when the night is clear, and the advisory is lowered, we’ll force the door at the top of the stairwell and for a moment — with the alarms ringing in our ears — we’ll see the satellites. We’ll put our children on our shoulders, we’ll point off into the night sky and say, “Look: the stars were like that.”
(The stars we watched from hillsides, where we held hands and kissed and laughed and spun.)
Our children will smile politely and take pictures with their augmented reality HMDs. They’ll update their Instagram feeds.
(Their avatars will hold hands with other avatars and kiss and laugh and spin.)
Before the Environmental Health Police arrive to close the door and give us a citation, we’ll hide our disappointment. You’ll put your head on my shoulder and I’ll make a remark about “kids these days.” We’ll try to remember what it was like to play in the rain. How it felt to kiss, sheltered in a doorway, our shirts pressed against our bodies, our bodies pressed against one another, water dripping off the ends of our noses.
We’ll try to imagine what it is like to be a child and never jump in a puddle.
Our children will try to imagine how anybody got by before augmented reality and will desperately hope that we don’t want to play another video of sparrows, or polar bears, or dolphins, or trees, or any other dead thing, when we go back home.
September 2012
In Praise of iDollatry: An Interview with Davecat and Sidore
Photo by Claire Dossin
Over the last half dozen years, I’ve found myself increasingly fascinated by the countless ways in which people find meaning in life and in themselves. I suppose a number of things contributed to this: I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries about the various subcultures that people inhabit and which end up providing people with the identity they are seeking to possess, I’ve also been struck by how bizarre my own beliefs are in comparison to pretty much any other belief system — indeed, by how bizarre any belief system is to those who do not inhabit it — and I guess I’m increasingly fascinated by the whole meaning of meaning (i.e. why we feel the need to have some sort of “identity” that we identify with, why we feel the urge to bemeaningful at all, and so on). I’m also struck by the ways in which all of us are actively participating in constructing the worlds in which we live and the people who live in those worlds. It’s all ideology, right?
I think one of the things that prompted me to think about these things in new ways was a documentary I watched years ago called Guys and Dolls (you can watch it online here). This documentary follows some men who end having intimate relationships with “Real Girl” dolls. All the people in that film are pretty fascinating, but one fellow, Davecat, stood out to me — in part, because he seemed like a pretty intelligent, grounded, and content fellow. Consequently, when I saw Davecat again making an appearance on another show, I decided to contact him to ask if he would be willing to be interviewed on my blog. Happily, Davecat agreed and we have been able to exchange some emails.
Posted below are the questions I asked and the answers he provided. I want to thank him for being open to this exchange and for permitting me to ask some personal questions. He has been a fantastic dialogue partner. Thanks, Davecat!
For those who are itnerested, Davecat blogs at Shouting to Hear the Echoes. He maintains a Twitter feed (see here) and his wife, Sidore, also has a Twitter feed (see here).
(PS — If anybody has any questions or remarks, feel free to comment. Davecat and I will both be following along .)
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